The Eagles spent $495.75 million, and La Canfora says the Birds are among the teams that "stand out, stringing together a good run without grossly overspending." He makes the same case for the Giants (No. 19, $497.63 million) and Bears (21st, $495.57 million). Of course, all three teams reached a Super Bowl during that span, with the Giants winning the title. New England is 10th at $513.31 million.

Conversely, the team at the top of the list in spending -- to no one's surprise -- is the Dallas Cowboys at $566.89 million and still searching for an elusive playoff victory. The Redskins -- backed by Daniel Snyder's cash -- are third at $547.37 million. Seattle is a surprising second at $552.42 million.

On one hand, the list is self-nullifying as a marker of success. Money doesn't equal wins.

On the other, with their new stadium and passionate fanbase, the Eagles are one of the most valuable franchises in the league. They should be able to stretch out a bit more than 20th.

I actually love when this kind of information comes out. Not because it will be endlessly rehashed as a talking point whenever these guys drop two games in a row, but because it's a stick that pokes the beehive. Usually there's a response. And then we learn even more.

Bonus question: so if the band/ DJ plays a Michael Jackson song at a wedding this weekend (not just Hank and Kendra, but any wedding), everyone's going to have to treat it like a head of state died, right? Like the whole place will get up to dance, the bandleader will give some half-assed eulogy, something like that?

Bonus bonus question: which Eagles attendee will be playing the role of uncomfortable alcoholic relative/ lonely unmarried bridesmaid at the ceremony tonight and just make a drunken jackass of themselves? I mean, it happens at every wedding I attend, I can't imagine these guys are any different. Is it Reggie Brown? By 10:30 he's draped over DeSean Jackson's shoulder and slurring, "You just think you're soooo big, dontcha. DONTCHA! Well I wuz gonna be the new star...me...the Reg! Don't trustem, kid, don't trustem. They're bullsh*t. Who's drunk? I'm not drunk. You're drunk."

So after yesterday's New Coke post, it's back to football around here. And while I wish the Sixers the best of luck with their new pick, man, you guys have your work cut out for yourselves when it comes to making people care.

Continuing the semi-theme of looking around the division, I spent some time looking at the Cowboys offense last night. I was curious about a few things, like why the offense wasn't as good last year, how Roy Williams should fare this year, and just generally how has the shape of it evolved since Romo took over two and a half seasons ago.

This isn't going to be one of those argument posts, where I make a case for one reading of the data. Instead, it's more descriptive, with some new questions at the end.

The first player I looked at was Jason Witten. For my money, he's the best skill-position player Dallas has, but I do think tight end is a position with diminishing marginal pass-catching returns. That is, you want a great tight end to make situational plays and help open up the rest of the offense, but if you go to him too many times, you may be missing opportunities on the outside for bigger plays. (TO probably wouldn't describe the situation the same way, but he'd no doubt agree.)

The traditional stats give some support to this position:

Almost 100 receptions for a tight end is a very big number. Witten's yard/catch number has been remarkably stable, but has their been a per-play downside to "forcing" him the ball? For that, we turn to FO's stats:

Uh, no. It hasn't been a problem. His DVOA dropped a bit last year, but you're still looking at remarkably consistent production, whether you throw him the ball 91, 120 or 141 times.

What about Marion Barber? That's a guy whose role really changed last year. He went from being the "closer" to the "man," and it doesn't seem to have been a good shift:

And unlike Witten, Barber's FO stats don't bail him out:

That's a big time regression right there. Of course, when we're talking about running backs having issues, the first thing to check is always the offensive line. The problem for Barber is that the rest of the backs didn't share his issues:

Yes, Barber had the toe injury late last year, but check out his game logs. They don't tell the story of a guy who was playing great until he got hurt.

Especially given how well the other two guys ran the ball last year, and how dangerous Felix Jones can be when he has the ball in his hands, I don't see how Dallas doesn't shift Barber back to his old role as a late-game punisher. Sure, let him start because he's earned it, but give the other guys the mid-field and early carries, and bring in Barber when it's late or you're down by the goal line.

A new coaching staff would probably have no problem doing that. Fortunately, Wade Phillips is still around.

Here's another chart that suggests the offensive line wasn't really the problem last year:

The two columns at right have two different ways of calculating sack rates. In the end, it doesn't really change the numbers much, although I think the big difference between Johnson's 07 and 08 numbers probably comes from kneeldowns. The biggest difference in overall sack rates just comes from Johnson playing more last year.

For the overall shape of the passing offense, we have this chart (click for full size):

I cut it down to the top players at each position because it removes a lot of clutter. The bottom line gives you the contributions of the chaff.

Basically, it looks to me like the Cowboys had two good receivers (2005), two very good receivers (2006), and then just Terrell Owens and a bunch of guys (2007 and 2008). I know the folks in Dallas are all excited about Miles Austin -- and he did post an impressive YPC of 21.4 last year -- but even with the addition of Roy Williams, I don't see how this isn't a much less talented receiving corps than they used to have. Patrick Crayton looks like a #2 Eagles receiver (pre-2008 edition), meaning he'd be a #3 anywhere else.

With that said, Dallas may be making it up somewhat in other areas. After years of watching how the Eagles use Brian Westbrook, it shouldn't be hard for Dallas to figure out how to get Felix Jones involved in the passing game, if the receivers don't step up.

There's nothing really interesting about Romo's stats last year. He was pretty much the same player, just not quite as good. Blame Jessica, TO, Garrett or a decrease in receiving talent (including the aging of TO), as you see fit.

The last question, and maybe the most important, is what we can expect from Roy Williams this year. I'm honestly not that impressed by the guy. He's got great physical attributes, but on the field he seems like a poor man's Braylon Edwards. Compare his last four seasons to TO's:

Now, granted, you can't use these stats to strip out quarterback effects. There's no question about who was in the better situation. But even in Williams' big-stat 2006 season, his FO numbers just aren't that good. A DYAR of 250 and DVOA of 8.7% puts you just outside the top 10 in terms of NFL receivers. That's down in Derrick Mason / Greg Jennings territory. Those guys are good receivers, but they're not HOFers. And while Williams' big body can provide matchup issues in the red zone, he's not a guy with the greatest hands. He'll make some amazing catches, but he'll also drop some he should come up with. You at least have a shot down there.

After looking at all these numbers, I'm pretty firmly convinced that if the Cowboys are going to get the offense revving again, it's not going to be the receiving corps carrying the load. It's going to be on that big offensive line and a very talented backfield instead. And if Dallas is controlling the line of scrimmage and Romo has time when they pick his spots, they can be a very dangerous offense indeed.

June 25, 2009

Hello from Sydney! The day job has had me down under for the week, and my hosts here have made sure that there hasn't been much free time to keep up with Eagles-related goings-on (which I must imagine pleases my corporate masters). Mercifully, this has been one of the slowest Birds news weeks in recent memory, so it doesn't look like I missed too much.

In the absence of actual Eagles commentary, some football-related notes from Down Under, as I await the departure of my return flight:

Sav Rocca. I had grandiose plans of chatting up as many Aussies as possible about Sav Rocca: what was he like as an Aussie Rules player, do they follow him in the NFL, that sort of thing. I was hoping to get some good scuttlebutt on both Rocca himself as well as the local opinion of his exploits in the NFL. This "didn't really work out." I must have been asking the wrong people, as most I spoke with could only manage a vague reference to "North Melbourne," followed by a set of questions for me about the NFL. Whoa whoa whoa. I'm the one asking the questions around here. One guy even tried to start explaining to me that he was pretty sure that Rocca had played in the Super Bowl this year. Grrrr.

State of Origin. I had the pleasure of catching a bit of the State of Origin rugby match on Wednesday night on TV. State of Origin is essentially a mid-season All-Star series where all the guys who came up in New South Wales (Sydney) play the guys who grew up in Queensland (Brisbane). The locals assured me that the games were taken quite seriously by the players, and the tenor of the contact on the field led me to believe that this was true (these guys were hitting). Of course, this led to some idle speculation on my part regarding what the NFL equivalent of State of Origin would look like -- would you do it by state? By college conference? Also, they've done similar things with the NHL All-Star Game in the past (North America versus World, that sort of thing?). Obviously, this would never actually happen in pro football, what with the whole "it's too dangerous to ever let these guys play anything but a fully sanctioned and official game" thing.

U-S-A! U-S-A! So when I got on the plane Saturday afternoon, I was pretty bummed about the US Soccer team. After a couple disappointing qualifiers (even the win was disappointing), they showed a little life against Italy and then completely puked on themselves versus Brazil. Given what I'd seen of Egypt, I didn't give them much of a chance of getting a result in their third game, much less advancing on an exotic goal-differential scenario. Well well well. I guess I hadn't taken into account the possibility of the soccer equivalent of a 13.5-favorite losing at home in Week 17, much less standing up to Spain in the semi-final. If the key to USMNT success is making sure my *ss is on another continent (and I see no reason to suspect that it isn't), then I'm booking flights to South Africa for next summer ASAP.

Short of a World Series run, we don't generally give the other Philly sports their due around here, but I'm actually kind of intrigued by the Sixers and the draft tonight. Obviously the Brand thing hasn't worked out great, but the Sixers seem to be doing a nice job of identifying talented players with those mid-teen picks you get saddled with every year as a team that just barely makes the playoffs.

That seems like a pretty impressive feat to me. The bad teams can pick studs and the good teams generally are good because they already have one of those studs, so they can focus on complenetary players. It's harder for the bunch in the middle to do anything all that productive.

So let's open the floor to you closet basketball fans (which, attendance figures notwithstanding, I think still exist).

Questions:

Player you want to see them take tonight?

Other moves you'd like to see made? (And no, I don't think they're going to find much interest in Brand.)

Any reason we should expect Eddie Jordan to take this team to new heights? (Also, would it kill NBA.com to update his bio? That's linked to from the Sixers page.)

June 24, 2009

Even though we talk much more about the Eagles offense than the defense, the Birds have been a defensive-oriented team over this past decade.

During that time, it was the defense which has been the most consistent part of the football team. The offensive lit up the sky in 2004 but in the other years, it was the defense that led the way.

I'm not singling out Cobb, since the way he phrases this thought, it's actually not that inaccurate. The defense has been somewhat more consistent and the Birds have been a defensive-oriented team, when they've had their greatest success.

But the numbers really aren't as black and white as the people who argue that Jim Johnson has carried Andy Reid would think. Take a look:

In Andy's 10 seasons, the defense has been more highly ranked than the offense five times by yards, eight times by points, and six times by DVOA.

Some will argue that points are the only things that matter, but that leaves out the impact of special teams -- huge earlier this decade -- and also concedes too much ground on the defensive question. After all, it's nice to have a defense that gives up yards but not points, but it's much better to have a defense that gives up neither (ask the New York Giants).

As usual, DVOA's a pretty good tie-breaker. But even there, if not for the Mike McMahon experience in 2005, the defense could have been looking at a five-year streak as the junior partner before last season.

The defense definitely carried the load during the early years, but since then, it's been a much more equal partnership. And now that the D is back on track and the O has all those fun new toys to play with, things should get interesting.

Yeah, we don't use exclamation points around here very often, but when the Football Outsiders guys start giving premium content away for free, we're all over it.

Gabe noted a few weeks ago that FO would be doing something a little different with Pro Football Prospectus this year, due to a little issue related to not having a publisher. In an attempt to assuage everyone's concerns that maybe this year's version of the Football Outsiders Almanac (née PFP) wouldn't be the same great offering, they're giving away sample chapters for free.

You can start today with the New York Giants chapter, wherein we get to see the new book is pretty much the same as the old book. Long live the new book.

Now, with all of that said -- and really, I can't overemphasize how much you need to buy this book -- I know from personal experience that there are times one can get so excited about disproving conventional wisdom that, well, you get out in front of the data. And they've done that here:

The correlation of the incident to the team’s downswing in performance yielded a simple narrative: The Giants offense wasn’t as good without Plaxico Burress, and it turned them into a totally different team.

That narrative is simply untrue.

The Giants’ passing offense actually improved with Burress out of the lineup ... The running game declined some without the threat of Burress stretching the field to concern opposing safeties, but it wasn’t enough to drag the offense down; the team’s offensive DVOA was 20.6% with Burress in the lineup and 27.8% over the eight games he wasn’t around.

Those topline numbers are all well and good, but check out the chart they also helpfully include:

(Ordinarily I'd not just pilfer the graphic, but since they're giving the chapter away for free -- and since you should really, really buy the book -- I think we're ok.)

I'm not denying the extent to which defensive issues contributed to the team's slide, but look at those rushing numbers. Going from a DVOA of 21.1% to 11.3% is a huge swing. It's basically the difference between "we can't stop those guys" and "now we've got a chance."

Burress demands a double team ... But that's out the window now. Today, rather than worrying about how he's going to square the circle by constantly helping over the top on Burress while also bringing enough guys into the box to stop that wicked running game, Jim Johnson has the luxury of saying, screw it, I'll let my secondary cover these guys one-on-one, focus on stopping the run, and bring extra guys all day to try to shake up Eli.

This is a huge change for the Giants. And while it might not be enough for the Eagles to pull off a win this week, it will be enough to ensure New York isn't winning another Super Bowl.

The reason, I would wager, that the passing statistics look relatively unaffected is that I imagine every defensive coordinator in the league came to pretty much the same conclusion: I can't beat these guys if I don't stop their running game, so I'll throw what I have at that and take my chances with Eli.

There's tons of other good stuff in the chapter, of course, so get reading. The info on how the defense will change now that Spags is gone is also interesting. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of seeing great pass rushers dropping into coverage all that often either, but if I'm a Giants fan, I have to wonder if we're changing things up because that makes the most sense or because our new defensive coordinator has never held that position before and only has two years in the scheme.